Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself…She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men.
JOHN LOCKEAnd thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject.
More John Locke Quotes
-
-
Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.
JOHN LOCKE -
I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.
JOHN LOCKE -
If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.
JOHN LOCKE -
Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.
JOHN LOCKE -
So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
JOHN LOCKE -
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
JOHN LOCKE -
As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivated, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.
JOHN LOCKE -
But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression
JOHN LOCKE -
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
JOHN LOCKE -
Children have as much mind to show that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.
JOHN LOCKE -
Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.
JOHN LOCKE -
Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture.
JOHN LOCKE -
There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason.
JOHN LOCKE -
If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he… will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.
JOHN LOCKE -
Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. The great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.
JOHN LOCKE